MY VALUABLE THOUGHTS

(Yeah okay that's not the exact lyric but it's better for the PATHOS and PROFUNDITY I'm going for here.)

2019 has been a motherfucker, in the best and worst ways. It's been spent in self-imposed comedy exile, mostly on airplanes, traveling more for my day job than I ever have before (about 180,000 miles. Just typing that gave me motion sickness.)

It's also been spent in therapy, in lingering trips to the park with my dog Pearl, in long afternoon depression naps, in writing sessions where I do more staring at the computer waiting for something to fall out of my brain than actually writing,

It's not been spent on stage. It's not been spent on set, or posting all my Big Accomplishments and Opportunities. There hasn't been much creation, partially because I've been so exhausted from taking 4 flights a week and partially because my depression tends to numb my brain like a foot that's fallen asleep from sitting on it too long.

But I know I needed a break. I needed to repair some shit and ditch some old habits and build newer, healthier ones. And I needed to learn how to see value in myself outside of the comedy I create, something I haven't done since I was 18. Sometimes I think I was inexplicably sent on so much travel this year because I needed to learn how to look outward again and stop obsessing about looking inward (I say as I write yet another navel-gazing emo-blog).

I auditioned for a handful of commercials. I got called back once! Momma's still got it! I also took a writing class I mostly couldn't be at because of work travel, but I still gleaned some great things. And I recently finished an acting intensive and hated every goddamn minute of it even though I had a great teacher and great classmates and I know it was helping me (let's face it, I probably hated it because it WAS helping me, which meant I needed help, which meant I wasn't perfect, which meant it was a bullseye in the center of all my issues).

In one of the most surprising developments for my lazy, idle, video-game-addicted ass, I started CrossFit and somehow don't hate it! Sometimes I'm very bad at it and sometimes I am good at it and I am also learning (slowly, it's hard and I am dummm) to stop evaluating my experience of something by whether I'm Good At It or Bad At It.

I also just finished shooting a small role in an upcoming, super-fabulous web series that I will be posting more about soon.

But perhaps the most exciting development is, I'm creating again. I've started an improvised podcast that is launching in January (oh so many more details coming soon!). I've recorded 7 episodes already and found a scheme that makes recording as stress-free as possible, so I can do it despite being out of town half of each month. And best of all, it's just fucking FUN, which I sort of forgot how to have.

I'm also quietly working on a new season of John Loos: Too Big For This World (more info coming soon!), which has been both a delight and a steep climb. It turns out your sketch comedy brain is like any muscle and needs to be worked out to stay #swole, and after a couple years of idling, I've basically had to put it through sketch comedy CrossFit again. But I'm getting there! And I'm excited about what's being created. And perhaps for the first time, I genuinely don't care if it Rockets Me To The Top. I care that it's good, and fun and that the people involved have a great time creating it. As much as I'm dying to have something to post to Facebook about getting Hired or Cast in a Big Time TV Show or Movie, and get those 650-700 Likes and have a day and a half of checking people's lovely comments, it's okay if that doesn't happen. Traditional routes of success elude me, but I'm learning to see that more as a neat-o challenge rather than a discouragement.

Overall, 2020 is looking promising. New things are growing, old grudges and insecurities are dying (some are sticking around, because fuck me therapy is HARD), and even though I'm still sad most of the time, I understand why much more than I ever have. So that's something.

I can't wait to share what I've been working on, and I can't wait to start new things, and re-engage with the comedy world in a way that's healthier and less self-destructive.

For example: I'm doing a photo shoot in drag on Thursday. So already, the new year is going to be glam-fucking-tacular and I just remembered I have to go buy a new wig so if you'll excuse me, I'm returning to my natural habit of perusing drag queen stores.

It's going (Hugh) down(s) in 2020! In 2020, I am gonna go Ba(rbara)lls to the Wal(ters)l!

Comedy started killing me around 2015. Up until then, I had mostly found joy in the hustle, of having 45 shows and 87 rehearsals every week, all of them unpaid or sometimes costing me money. But after a series of disappointments, comedy eventually became malignant. And it started to destroy me on the inside. Now, in 2019, I’m only starting the process of uncovering how much damage it really has caused.

I grew up gay in a Fox News home in a conservative small town, which led me to develop many sticky layers of self-loathing, ones I’m still peeling off to this day. To combat this internal monologue that said I had no worth, no value, that I was incorrect and wrong and bad and a huge disappointment and galactic-level embarrassment, I became obsessed with Achieving. Accomplishing shit. Like, ribbons and trophies and awards. It didn’t matter what I did, or if I even liked doing it, as long as I got some sort of recognition at the end.

Most quarterback sacks on the football team? Check.

Most improved on the speech team? Check.

Essay contest winner at American Legion Boy’s State? CHIZZECK.

Student of the month AND student of the year? Yer goddamn right that’s a CHECK.

Incidentally, I also became obsessed with Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, etc. So much so that I met my first boyfriend on an online awards message board. I’m also, to this day, constantly on IMDB looking at what awards actors have one and pinpointing the years they were most relevant and powerful.

The Chicago Comedy world, in retrospect, was a honey trap for a self-hating gay boy like me. It provided a very clear structure for accomplishment: a well-lit Candy Land path of highly specific benchmarks to hit on your way to Saturday Night Live superstardom.

Take classes. Get on a team. Get invited to a special audition. Get called back. Get on a touring company. Get on a stage. Get an SNL audition.

Easy peasy!

And, what’s better, it was all based around improv, perhaps the one art form where you truly don’t have to have any talent to have moderate success. And that unearned, moderate success leads you to believe you DO have a precious, rare talent and you can abortion-joke and woosh your dreams into reality. At least, it did for me!

When I started my first improv classes at the iO West in 2005, I took one look at the photos of Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers and Mike Myers on the wall and decided this was what I was meant to accomplish. If I could get on Saturday Night Live, then I could prove to EVERYONE (ahem, myself) that in fact I WAS correct, I WASN’T an anomaly and that I DID have worth.

Well.

2015 was the year I realized I had been thrown hopelessly astray from the Path to Success everyone else was using to get to SNL. I had failed four times to get on a Harold team at the iO. I had failed every TourCo audition for Second City. I had gotten cast on a ship, but if we’re being honest that was 99% because I was in a relationship with someone who had been doing the boats. And, in a cry of delusional agony, I created a web series to Really Show Them. This was Sheryl Still Single.

And Sheryl, bless her giant messy bitch heart, was thoroughly rejected. It was rejected from 12 of 13 festivals, the one it got into being the one notorious for accepting everything.

This is when comedy started killing me. I became extraordinarily mean to myself, because I didn’t have those arbitrary accomplishments to use to delude myself into thinking I had worth. I would say out loud I should die, that I was worthless, that I was a monster that didn’t belong on this Earth. All because I couldn’t accept my own mediocrity. I refused to look at the evidence: in fact, there had been scant few, if any, true indicators in my 12 years in the Chicago comedy scene that I had any ability to even come close to accomplishing my stratospheric goals.

Chicago comedy is great at drawing you in but is in no way equipped or interested in providing a dignified way out. It's a mental health bear trap, and by 2015 I was gnawing my own foot off.

I actually managed to accomplish some cool (if inconsequential) things with my follow-up web series Too Big For This World, but by then it was too late to pull me out of my spiral. If it wasn’t Saturday Night Live, it was just further evidence I was a Huge Fucking Failure.

I became so depressed by my inability to progress that I started shutting down. I started shitting blood. I became unimaginably exhausted and idle. I also became so extraordinarily sensitive that even the slightest bit of feedback or criticism would send me into a tailspin that could last days, or weeks. This fucked me out of opportunities simply because I was unable to process them.

Example: I was asked to deliver a script to a woman at a production company and spent months being unable to rise to the challenge. It was also a very personal script about my depression and career as a comedian, so her inevitable polite decline might as well have been a cannon blast to my face because I had long-since worn through whatever emotional resistance padding I had.

Since then, I have been unable to get back on my feet. I talk myself out of every idea for a new web series or video or show, telling myself they’re Fucking Stupid and embarrassing in ways that redefines the word. It’s gotten better in recent months, but for a good year it was a special kind of hell.

So that’s why all has been quiet on the comedy front. I don’t know what else I have left, and I don’t trust my ability to absorb any more (self-imposed) disappointment.

The good news, however, is that in 2019 I’ve been like a Charlene song and have been visiting Me a whoooollle fucking bunch. I took an acting class and a writing workshop. I started CrossFit! Turns out I’m a douchebro and I kind of absolutely love it! And most importantly I’m back in therapy after years of psyching myself out by convincing myself if I went back I would just do it wrong and fail and hate myself for not being a Good Therapy Patient.

So, on a personal front, I suppose I am accomplishing things. They don’t come with trophies or ribbons or exciting Facebook announcements that 678 people Like. These accomplishments won’t be posted on Deadline or put me on a Vulture list of Top Comedy Fetuses To Watch. But, I’m learning to understand their quiet momentousness. And, I’m learning to be kinder to myself. To be okay with my okay-ness.

I will do comedy again. I don’t know in what form, or when, or how, but I know when it happens it will be solely to supplement my own joy and not some desperate They Shoot Horses Don’t They? marathon death dance for gatekeepers to maybe possibly position myself for a Waiting For Guffman-esque SNL audition opportunity that will never, ever come to pass (YES I REFERENCED TWO MOVIES IN ONE SENTENCE, DEAL WITH IT ANALOGY POLICE).

I mean, bottom line: I can’t expect the world to embrace me if I don’t hug me first. Ha! Put that shit on a coffee mug in a swirly font, Jan, and send the residuals straight to my gaping asshole.

Oh, and the funny thing about all those things I failed to accomplish in Chicago? I didn’t actually want them. I wanted to know I was good enough to achieve them. But, I didn’t want them. I didn’t actually want to drive around the country in a van performing for racist and homophobic crowds. I didn’t want to do a fucking Harold (who wants to actually do a fucking Harold?).

I just wanted to know I was wanted. And good enough. And not a mistake or anomaly. The same thing I’ve always wanted, since I was old enough to understand my queerness.

So what comes next? I don’t know. I’m playing a lot of Tomb Raider lately and working on some pilots here and there. That’s enough for now. Because I’m enough, regardless of my output, regardless of my accomplishments.

And honestly, being able to say that is truly my biggest accomplishment in years.

2019 has been an odd year so far. I can't, for the life of me, seem to get motivated to create much of anything. Every option seems pointless. Every possible avenue I could go down at this point in my (non) career, I feel like I know where it leads. I've been to all those dead ends before. And I'm tired of the brick walls.

After getting unceremoniously swatted down last year after attempting to write a pair of intensely personal projects, I've been pretty much in creative shambles.

What's worse, I can't even summon the energy to create some sort of bullshit realization about myself to sell to people, which is what I usually do in leaner, more embarrassingly empty times. You know, if I'm not doing The Work at least I can say I'm doing Work On Myself so everyone feels better about my failure to succeed.

The truth is, I haven't pushed any projects forward this year and I haven't learned a goddamn thing about myself. I've just been in blob mode, floating through, trying to avoid forming a shape of any kind because that kind of commitment generates more anxiety than I can handle, because putting myself out there naturally invites criticism and anymore I'm scared of what even the most gentle criticism does to me.

One thing I promised myself I'd do this year is take a class. And I did! Or, at least I tried. I signed up for an introductory acting class and after flying 12 hours from London to get home last Friday, went to bed and woke up and drove down to Hollywood to finally--almost two years after moving to LA--Get It Started.

But! Oh no! I couldn't find parking. Anywhere. I circled and circled and circled and finally had to park half a mile away. By the time I walked into the the acting studio, I was 20 minutes late and wasn't allowed to enter the class. So I would have to try again in a couple months, they said.

I drove home, completely shattered and unsurprised. Of course I couldn't find parking. Of course they wouldn't let me in. What evidence have I ever had in the last 15 years that anyone actually wants me to be in this industry? I was rebuffed and ignored and overlooked by every single gatekeeper in Chicago, what every made me think it would be different in Los Angeles, a place that 's infinitely more complex, competitive and filled with assholes?

I know, it's just a class. Just a fluke. But when it takes you two years to build up the courage to do something and then you try it and literally CAN'T FIND A SPACE TO PARK YOURSELF and get told YOU CAN'T COME IN, you know, it's hard not to let that be submitted as evidence in the case of John Loos vs. Should He Even Try.

It comes after many years of being told thank u next, after getting rejected from 12 festivals in a row for the web series you still feel is the most "you," after never getting a callback for the auditions that are the key to getting into the Cool Chicago Improviser Club, after never getting asked to be in the improv team that's LITERALLY ALL ALUMNI OF YOUR COLLEGE IMPROV TEAM even though at the time you lived in a three-flat with THREE OF THEM and one time even were asked to watch one of their dogs while THE TEAM OF ALL ALUMNI FROM YOUR COLLEGE TEAM rehearsed upstairs. It's being the 15th and last man off of the bench in high school basketball, who never plays and when he does people react like a three-legged dog is on the court. It's being in 5th grade and never getting picked for any of the sports teams, or summer tournament teams, or having any evidence, really, that you're actually good at anything.

When you live inside this giant ski-slope forehead of mine, it's another chapter in a narrative that has been written your entire life. That you're not right, you're the wrong thing, you don't fit, you're too big, you're too butch, too femme, too gay, too untalented, too ambitious, not good enough. Just play football and like it, John. That's what you're made for.

That's why, when I wrote that pair of personal projects last year, the rejection felt like an iron maiden closing in on me. The writings were the most "me" I had ever been, and to be rejected felt like people were saying "you are wrong. You are incorrect. That you try at all is the greatest joke in history."

I get that this thought process is entirely stupid, and is a byproduct of my pernicious depression. I should be able to handle criticism without it totally wigging me out. But I can't. I don't have that skill or that level of emotional intelligence. I understand the absurdity of it all. Believe, that's yet another thing I spend long hours beating myself up over. But understanding it doesn't make it go away. If anything, it just amplifies the narrative of being a giant mistake that I can't seem to shake.

I want to want this. I do. But I just want someone to want me to be in it, too.

​On my 5th birthday, I found myself on the floor of our living room, staring up at the popcorn ceiling, completely blown away by the realization that no matter how long I lived, I would never be four again.

"Goodbye four," I said aloud, into the ether.

Four was it. It was the best of youth, the ideal age. And it was over. That was it.

As I got older, I started to develop a very unhealthy relationship with time. I was always aware of exactly how much youth I had left, how much longer I had until I was too old for my toys, how much longer until puberty ripped me away from childhood.

When I was in 5th grade, my friend Joe and I were playing pretend in his room, jumping around the beds like superheros. We had done this many times before. But this time, we quickly got bored. We were getting too old to play pretend. This, in fact, would be our last Pretend.

I was devastated.

I thought back to my life in 4th grade, 3rd grade, kindergarten.

That was it, I thought. The best of youth. And it's gone.

Through middle school and high school, I stood idly by as my classmates matured and got hickies and handjobs on the band bus and eventually started having sex. As a closeted gay kid in a conservative town, I had no interest in the physical. In fact, as a defense mechanism, I decided I was better than everyone else for not giving in to my dirty carnal urges.

In reality, I was pouting. Over losing a childhood I wasn't ready to let go, that I felt I had squandered and not properly enjoyed.

College represented a turn. Out of my hometown, with the knowledge that I would probably come out at some point, for the first time in my life my excitement of what was to come outweighed my devastation over what was no more.

I came out. I had sex. All the colors I hadn't seen before came trickling through my eyes. Suddenly, I only wanted to get older, more grown-up. I never wanted to look back.

A few weeks after I graduated college, I moved to Rancho Cucamonga for an online relationship and became a house-husband in the suburbs. Now, instead of being far behind my friends' growth curve, I was far ahead.

This is it, I thought. This right now.

I got a grown-up job. And I commuted. And commuted. And realized maybe this wasn't it.

I enrolled in improv classes and found a space to play again, to be four again. I became obsessed.

All the famous people on the wall were calling me to join them. Tina Fey. Seth Meyers. Andy Dick. Andy Richter. Rachel Dratch. I was headed to the magical golden place they were; I just had a later flight.

I studiously IMDBed every famous person who had ever done improv at the iO or Second City or Groundlings and started doing math. So-and-so got onto Saturday Night Live when they were 28. 32. 23. 34. If they weren't on SNL, I noted when their big breaks were.

I did more math. It would be a year before I finished this program. I would need a few years to become a Thing in the improv community.

Eventually, I decided I would be easy on myself and give myself till I was 30 to make it on Saturday Night Live. That was more than enough time.

30 was it. 30 would be it.

My improv classes and my relationship came to an end after a year and change. I failed thrice to get on a Harold team. I was single and gay for the first time in my life. So, I decided to move to Chicago to be in the Mecca of improv and sketch. I quickly realized this would require taking another year of classes, which would eat into my cushion of making it on Saturday Night Live before 30. That didn't matter, though.

Chicago was it. Chicago was where it was at.

I did another round of improv classes and a year of writing classes. Again I did not make a Harold team. I began performing with independent teams and bars and even shittier bars. I got cast in GayCo Productions, the premiere gay sketch group of the city run by my future husband Andy. I got cast in Skinprov, the almost-naked improv show at The Annoyance. I found new outlets to perform at, friends to collaborate with, new ways to create my comedy.

At the same time, I learned the most common route people took to make it to SNL.

1) Understudy a Second City touring company2) Get on a touring company3) Get a resident stage 4) Get invited to an SNL showcase5) Get invited to New York to audition for Lorne Michaels.

That would be it. That would be the way.

I began to expect things. A cardinal sin. Time passed. I did more shows. I made more comedy. For some reason, I still couldn't even get close to Step #1. I got frustrated. Angry. Petulant. Impatient. Shitty bar improv began to feel beneath me. I should be advancing faster than this, goddamnit.

Step 1 will be it. Just focus on Step 1.

More time passed. I got cast to perform on a cruise ship.

This would be it. The stepping stone to Step 1. The Step 0.5.

I performed on a ship for four months. And then another ship for another four months. And then nothing. Nothing even close to Step 1 happened for me.

I had to find an alternate route to SNL. Maybe try the iO again? Or through the Annoyance?

30 was barreling down the road toward me. Time was running out. But still, 30 would be it.

30 was it.

30 came and went. Nothing. 30 wasn't it. I was no closer to my completely vague idea of superstardom than I had been at 25.

I continued to perform, frustrated and angry. Shows became chores. I became bitchy during rehearsals. I began to hate the fact I was still doing the same things, that I hadn't advanced. I was an entitled asshole who thought he was an insulted prince.

Yet, I still created, because I didn't know how not to. I created plays, musicals, sketch shows, web series, and I started to create them from places of spite, bitterness or profound sadness. Because in my first 5 years in Chicago, none of the gatekeepers seemed to care about me or notice me.

Chicago wasn't it.

Comedy wasn't fun anymore. Comedy was a chore, an annoying means to an end I should've attained long ago, but I hadn't because I was stupid and untalented and lazy and not the right kind of gay. I was in 5th grade again, still playing pretend, getting bored and realizing I was too old for this shit.

Time went on. I developed a new tactic: extreme abundance. I began creating comedy in CostCo sizes, constantly, with no breaks. I wanted to show everyone how much of a machine I was, and make those who had not noticed me feel stupid for overlooking such a clearly profound genius.

I even created my own solo play about never getting invited to an SNL showcase, right during SNL showcase season. No producers came, of course. No one noticed. It ended with me screaming at the top of my lungs for Lorne Michaels to notice me and then getting killed by a police sniper. It was a good show, actually. But I was not in a good place.

This isn't it, I thought. This isn't how it was supposed to be.

Two years later, I finally moved back to LA with my husband. LA is a big, insanely busy, completely empty and lonely metropolis. I adore it. I wanted to break free of confines of Chicago, let go of my anger and pain, reclaim my narrative and find a new, viable path to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

This will be it, I told myself, over and over.

We arrived in LA and I promptly fell deep into the sofa. Partially because I fucking needed it. I was exhausted from 11 years of the Chicago grind. Still, a new type of depression pulled me into the cushions and held me there. I stopped performing for the most part. I wrote some things. And rested. And got more depressed. And mad at myself for not being what I thought I should be. I said mean things to myself when no one was around. Horrible things. I was worthless. I was nothing. I was a failure.

Then I started shitting blood.

This is it, hypochondriac John thought. This is butt cancer. This is the end.

I got medicated and I got a colonoscopy. Everything was fine. Except my comedy career. I had nothing going. No gas. No direction. No path.

Then we bought a house. A weird, old house that I desperately love. And we moved in. And it's amazing and surreal and great. And two days later I turned 36. And the night before, as my husband travelled, I sat alone in our new, weird, lovely old house and was dumbfounded by the wonderful progress we had made that I hadn't noticed because I was busy being a sad asshole perpetually focused on the next thing. And I began to think of what had to be left behind to get us to this benchmark. And I started to cry, the first time in I don't know how long.

Once again, I was completely blown away by the realization a beautiful, transformative phase of my life was over. Forever.

The rehearsals in freezing classrooms. The boozy nights at the old Annoyance in Uptown that seemed to last forever. Staying out at the Green Mill until 4am. Having post-show beers in a post-show glow in the windows of Old Town Ale House on a sticky August night. Doing improv warm-ups by the dumpster behind The Playground and having to move whenever a bus drove through. Taking a shitty temp job so I could afford new show shoes. Getting my lanyard at that big annual SketchFest meeting. Riding on the high of a standing O for a week. Getting depressed when no one came to the show I spent a month preparing. Shopping for blazers at Village Discount Outlet. Working on a tight 5. Getting nervous around a Big Deal improviser. Getting asked to sit in on a show starring that Big Deal. Constantly making new friends, creating together, trying together, flying together, crashing together, burning together, yearning together, flicking it all off together. Being an annoyed duchess on stage over and over and over. Putting on drag makeup poorly. Buying wigs and jewelry at Beatnix, 70s blouses at Ragstock, martinis at Mini-bar, catching the train to catch another train to get to another show. Being there and being part of it and breathing that electric air when the night is alive with comedy and adventure.

Recently I was on a gig with a few colleagues and our the shuttle that picked us up from the airport was delayed. It was about 1:30pm, and the place we were headed closed for lunch at 2pm. It's lunches were notoriously AH-MAY-ZEENG and we were all starved AF, and with each passing second our stress ballooned as the window to make it to the epic smorgasbord shrank.

One friend was 100% sure we would make it in time, we just had to put positive thoughts into the universe. The second was pretty sure we were fucked, certain to roll up at 2:01pm. The third friend swung back and forth between wild confidence and despondency.

The optimist asked me what I felt would happen. Would we make it?

I answered in the most John Loos-ian way possible: "I think everyone will make it except me."

This is generally how I feel most things will go. It will work out for others, but never me.

The shuttle finally took off and we reached the lunch spot with barely a minute to spare. This place was part of a gorgeous corporate complex, so as we stepped off the shuttle, a person greeted us with badges that gave us access to the dining area. Everyone grabbed their badge and walked briskly to their lunch feast, elated that it had worked out.

Except.

Oh whoops.

"I'm so sorry, I don't have a badge for a Mr. John Loos. You'll have to go to the front desk and check with them."

It turns out I was FUCKING RIGHT, BISH. Everyone made it in time EXCEPT. ME.

The story ends happily, don't worry. My friends told the staff I was on my way, and was able to slide in before the dining room door closed.

I mean, okay, I probably don't have that kind of sway over the universe, but even if it the badge thing was just coincidence, lately I've become more aware of what I say out loud, especially what I say out loud to myself.

Late last year and early into this year, I developed a particularly bad habit of saying not nice things to myself when I was alone. I won't repeat them, but the sentiments I was expressing basically boiled down to "I deserve bad things because I am a bad person." Healthy, right?

Then, oh wouldn't you know! I started shitting blood.

(cue "Brand New Day" from The Wiz)

So of course I took my Shining Elevator ass to the doctor and ended up getting a colonoscopy and endoscopy. All they found was some tissue irritation, no polyps or growths or evidence of anything else. And I got some super sexy suppositories and some other meds and I also stopped saying those bad things out loud (because no one, not even me, deserves to drink a gallon of colyte. Okay, well, Brett Kavanaugh does. Fuck that guy. He can drink two gallons.)

Three months later, I don't shit blood anymore and everything's back to normal and my butthole looks GREAT AND SEXY so if you're a hot guy reading this, I promise you everything back there is SUPER FANTASTIC, 10/10 WOULD RECOMMEND.

Again, I don't know if there was any correlation between what I was vocalizing and what happened to my body, but I'm not taking any chances and actively working on being kinder to myself. Which, honestly, is so very hard because I have so much intrinsic shame around certain things and also I'm from the Midwest, where being nice to oneself is considered decadent. But, I'm working on it.

I'm especially trying to be kinder with myself in my comedy. I've long had the same mentality in my comedy career that I had on that shuttle.

Everyone is going to make it but me.

And so far, surprise surprise, that's mostly been true! Turns out if you say you can't do something enough times, people will start to believe you! If you're convinced you're invisible, people will struggle to see you! If you say you will fail, you probably will fail!

So I'm trying my best to vocalize positive things. It sounds hokey AF but whatever. I'm trying to say the things I want out loud, and not be ashamed of them. I want to win an Oscar for playing a sad old woman who makes Christmas dolls in her basement! There! I admit it!

I've even created a dumb little diddy I sing to myself about how I'm going to get a TV deal one day. (Notice I can't even type a sentence about it without diminishing it by calling it dumb, this is 35 years of brutal self-loathing I'm trying to unlearn WHICH IS HARD AND I'M TRYING).

It's hard, being nice to myself. And it's hard to get myself to a place where I truly believe good things are on the horizon, especially in this FUCKING NIGHTMARE HELL WORLD WE LIVE IN and it's CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT OF HELL NEWS.